


Tracing Patterns

by Verasteine



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, M/M, relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-20
Updated: 2009-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 09:52:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verasteine/pseuds/Verasteine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the beginning, Jack tries to understand Ianto. He knows he's failing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tracing Patterns

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://demotu.livejournal.com/profile)[**demotu**](http://demotu.livejournal.com/), for reading through it even though she had other things on her mind, [](http://kilawater.livejournal.com/profile)[**kilawater**](http://kilawater.livejournal.com/), for betaing this spontaneously, and [](http://caladria.livejournal.com/profile)[**caladria**](http://caladria.livejournal.com/), for telling me to suck it up, and giving it her full beta-fu. This'll get jossed by series 3. That's fine. It's just a backstory I've always envisioned for Ianto.

**1**

He's stripping Ianto's clothes with methodical care, and it is their first time together in bed. Not the first time they've had some sort of sex, that was last week in his office, with the stopwatch. As he slides Ianto's tie off and starts on the buttons of Ianto's shirt, Ianto breathes, slowly, standing almost dispassionately before him as if this is an everyday affair.

His pupils are blown, and from the shallowness of Ianto's breath Jack knows he feels differently. He's not gulping in air, not yet, not like he does when he's close to orgasm, his face taut with yearning. When Jack slides the shirt off his shoulders and starts on Ianto's belt, he feels the muscles of Ianto's abdomen quiver. And then just for a moment, Ianto tenses when Jack slides trousers and boxers down in one go, and Jack wonders why.

\--  
**3**

Ianto flinches away from Jack's reaching hand when he wakes from his nightmare, and it's the third time Ianto's spent the night. Two weeks ago, he would still extract himself from Jack's embrace after sex, but last week something changed and Ianto stayed. He's a calm sleeper, usually, and the disturbance shook Jack from his light slumber. Ianto is scrambling to the other side of the bed, breathing hard, sweat running down his face. It takes a full minute before he's awake enough to recognise Jack, and an equally full minute before the blush fades from his face, and then he scrambles from the bed.

Jack isn't fast enough to stop him leaving.

\--  
**7**

Ianto changes the subject, and it's the seventh time he's done that. Jack had counted the first four times in retrospect on board the Valiant, whiling away the long, lonely hours, and the last three he added since he came back. The only place Ianto talks about himself is in bed, never says anything meaningful about himself during the day, but Jack's efforts to truly get to know him are thwarted still.

"No," he says aloud, watching Ianto turn his head to look at him, frown, and fix him with a ready stare.

"What?"

"Don't change the subject," Jack replies.

Ianto sighs. "Maybe I don't want to talk about it."

Jack reaches out and trails a finger down Ianto's cheek, refusing to let this escalate into a fight. "I want to know you," he says softly.

Ianto sighs again. "This is not something you _want_ to know."

Jack wants to argue with him, but sees the look in Ianto's eyes and changes his mind.

\--  
**0**

Ianto is coming apart before his eyes and no matter what Jack says, it doesn't seem to stop the quiet hurt in his voice. Finally, Jack offers, "I never would have known all the people I have loved." Ianto drops his eyes to the desk, but Jack waits until he looks back up. "And I wouldn't change that for the world."

Ianto stares, then leans in to kiss him. They are both trying to forget things, they both have pain shining through in their voices, and Jack feels Ianto tremble as he strokes his hair. Ianto leans his forehead against Jack's, and his breath ghosts over Jack's cheek. "Don't let me think," he whispers softly.

Jack understands that better than Ianto can imagine. He wraps a hand around Ianto's cool fingers, and squeezes a promise.

\--  
**2**

A phone call in the middle of the night wakes him up, and it's the second time that month it's not about work. Ianto says his name softly, after a moment of silence that follows Jack answering, and Jack strains to hear the tremor in his voice. He waits another thirty seconds, and Ianto adds, "I feel lost."

It's not about sex, either, and Jack feels as lost as Ianto does. After what happened with Owen, Ianto seems more strained, more tense than usual. He says Ianto's name softly, and waits for the other man's exhale over the line. "That's okay," he promises gently, because he can't offer Ianto any absolution when he knows he hasn't earned it himself.

\--  
**13**

Jack loses count at thirteen, which seems ironic, or would have been if he believed in these strange superstitions. Thirteen or more times Ianto hasn't eaten lunch in the hub proper, but disappeared somewhere else, ostentatiously to deal with unfinished work, his lunch disappearing with him. Jack wonders if he should be worried, or if Ianto just needs to be alone.

\--  
**1**

Ianto falls asleep in the car on the way home, and it's the first time they've danced together. Jack spends the dark, quiet drive back remembering the feel of Ianto in his arms, so different to their embraces most of the time, and regrets being distracted in the moment. Ianto's head against his, Ianto's arms around him, swaying to the soft song. Jack realises Ianto must have picked the song himself, and makes a note to look up the lyrics.

Ianto stirs in the seat next to him, waking and glancing over his shoulder at the sleeping passengers on the back seat. "Are we nearly there?"

Jack smiles.

\--  
**0**

He fucks Ianto against his bedroom door, the night he returns from Flat Holm Island. They don't make it inside the bedroom. It isn't about anger or dominance, that passed a long time ago. Jack wants to sear away the images that stick behind his eyelids; the people he can't save, the ones he hasn't saved, the rooms they're in that remind him of other places. He knows how close he's come to being a prisoner, a life-long slave of something himself, and the empathy overwhelms.

Ianto takes all that he gives, and more, pulling him closer and when Jack's legs begin to tremble and his rhythm stutters, Ianto reaches back and curls a hand around Jack's hip, anchoring him as he comes apart.

\--  
**11**

The morning after, he lets Ianto take him, and it's all gentle fingers and roaming hands. When he asks Ianto afterward whether he's ever brought anger into the bedroom, his face clouds over.

It's the eleventh time Ianto changes the subject, and Jack wonders.

\--  
**3**

When Jack goes to him, it's three days after they've buried Tosh and Owen. He's put Martha on the train to London and allows himself to miss Ianto for the first time since they died. When Ianto opens the door, he simply lets Jack in. And Jack can't take it any more, this distance or this closeness, can't take the silences and the acceptance and the pain that stays hidden. Ianto lets him rage, but doesn't rise to the bait, and Jack is empty and frustrated and lonely when he finally sinks down on Ianto's living room floor.

He wakes up on Ianto's sofa with a pounding headache and a floral bedspread over his body.

\--  
**7**

It's seven hours later that Ianto comes to him, eyes red-rimmed and lip bleeding. Jack kisses away the blood and lets Ianto whisper in his ear as he slides his palm over Ianto's cock, lets him talk out the grief and the anger at their loss. Ianto groans against his neck as he comes, and Jack sends him home with the advice to get a good night's sleep.

\--  
**9**

Nine days later Ianto takes charge, drugging his coffee in an effort to get him to sleep. Jack wakes in Ianto's bed with a vague memory of being manhandled up the stairs and into Ianto's flat, and a not so vague feeling of absolute anger and betrayal. He finds Ianto in the kitchen, calmly brewing more coffee, and he smashes the coffee cup in Ianto's hand, splattering the hot liquid and ceramic all over the white wall.

\--  
**1**

They fight repeatedly, and Jack loses count of that very early on, until Gwen bursts into tears in the middle of their umpteenth shouting match. She yells at them between sobs, about how everything is falling to pieces, about what Tosh and Owen would have wanted, and finally about not wanting to lose more than she's lost already. In the end, they come together over their mutual concern for her, and when she's sitting on the floor, all talked out, Jack reaches over her head and runs his fingertips down Ianto's cheek.

It's the first time since Tosh and Owen died that he makes love to Ianto, and the first time Ianto cries about those deaths in front of him.

\--  
**12**

It is twelve days later that he walks in on Gwen and Ianto, heads bent close together, sitting on the sofa. Ianto starts like a guilty thing surprised, and Gwen puts a hand on his shoulder. The stab of jealousy is out of place and alien, and Jack can't remember how long ago he last felt jealous. Ianto rushes from the room, and Jack focuses on Gwen.

"Go after him," she says.

He narrows his eyes at her.

"Oh for goodness' sake, Jack, he needs you! The two of you, honestly, do you ever talk? He's been so afraid all this time, and you just blunder around... You don't get it, do you?"

He's angry at her presumption, at Ianto's inability to share whatever is going on, at the universe that dealt him this lot. "No," he grinds out.

"It's not about you, Jack," Gwen says softly, eyes shining. "You need to talk with him."

\--  
**37**

It's thirty seven steps to the archives, and three hundred and twelve seconds before he's found Ianto in the dark corner between X and Y. It's three beats of his heart that Ianto looks at him and stares, and two deep breaths before Ianto speaks.

"I'm sorry."

Jack breathes in again. "For what?"

"Shutting you out." Ianto looks at him, fingers twitching near his belt as if they need something to fiddle with.

"It wasn't just you."

Ianto shakes his head. "No, it was, Jack. You always wanted to talk. You didn't talk about your life, but you did talk about _yourself_, and I told myself there was no difference. I used that as an excuse, and--" He stops, fingers balling to fists, and Jack watches the struggle with his emotions.

"What are you talking about?" he says at last.

\--  
**9**

Jack sits with his back against the sofa, and Ianto sits with his back against Jack's chest. It's about nine hours since that moment, but Jack's not interested in counting time.

"They never stopped, Jack," Ianto continues softly, his voice hoarse from the long time he's spent talking. "Always, always yelling... Rhi played her stereo till the neighbours could hear it, and I just tried not to be there."

Jack tightens his arms around Ianto's chest, brushes his fingers in soothing strokes over Ianto's stomach. He's done that so much this night. He tilts his head and presses a kiss in Ianto's hair.

"I swore I wouldn't. Not with my children. Not with my partners." Ianto leans in to the caress, resting his head against Jack's cheek. "But I learned you can't escape your past. Lisa... I succeeded, mostly, and then it would come to a head, and we would fight, scream at each other until I lost my voice and she was packing a bag, sobbing." He shivers. "I don't know when I realised I can't lose you like that."

"You almost did," Jack says, and feels his voice crack.

Ianto finds his hand and laces his fingers through Jack's. "I kept telling myself you and I were different, we weren't as intense, but then you came back and I kept needing you. I don't know when I realised I loved you, but I know it scared me to death."

Jack smiles. "And then I nearly hit you."

Ianto scoffs. "I wasn't afraid of you." His voice drops low. "I was afraid I'd hit you back."

A part of Jack wants to stop him talking, wants to wrap him up in his embrace, take him to bed and kiss the memories away so neither of them has to think. He settles for kissing Ianto again.

"They divorced when I was thirteen. I thought, great, it's over now, and then it was all shared custody, and whether the Electro screened the film early enough to see the end and make curfew, and questions about new girlfriends." Ianto sighs. "It never ended."

\--  
**0**

The next time he watches Ianto fade into the background, he understands. The next time he watches Ianto count quietly to himself, he understands. The next time Ianto disagrees with him, he listens to the careful way Ianto constructs the argument. And later, when they're alone, he pulls Ianto close and kisses him deeply.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and watches Ianto as he falls apart.

\--  
_finis._


End file.
